Picking up the vibes in Beijing before major Trump-Xi visit

President Trump's impending meeting with President Xi in Beijing will naturally be largely devoted to discussing the Iran War.

That war and this meeting are also a good opportunity to discuss U.S. establishment attitudes to China, and one pernicious illusion in particular. Much Western analysis of the background to the summit has emphasized that Trump’s disastrous decision to attack Iran has put Xi in a much stronger position. However, during a visit by staff of the Quincy Institute to China last month, our Chinese hosts were at pains to indicate that China will continue to act with prudence and caution vis-a-vis the U.S. they regard as increasingly unpredictable and dangerous.

In my view, this portrayal of China’s policies is correct. The Iran War has demonstrated that language in the hawkish Western media and security circles about a Chinese-led “Alliance of Autocracies” or “Axis of Upheaval” is a fabricated myth intended to justify the writers’ own hopes for unconstrained U.S. global primacy. If China were an ally of Iran, we would either be in World War Three or the Trump administration would never have attacked Iran in the first place.

The U.S. is an ally of Japan, South Korea and fellow NATO members. It has troops on their soil and is obligated by treaty to come to their defense if attacked. In this strict sense, while China has numerous “partners” around the world, it has no allies (or significant bases) at all — which is indeed one of the greatest US strategic advantages over China.

Our Chinese interlocutors assured us that China has absolutely no intention of becoming militarily involved in this conflict, or of waging a proxy war against the US in Iran (as Washington and Moscow have done to each other in various places). There has therefore been no Chinese provision of weapons to Iran. Any intelligence aid has been very limited and covert.

Strikingly, China has also been cautious about economic help to Iran (through the supply of dual-use technology continues). A key factor in Netanyahu’s persuasion of Trump to attack Iran was the mass protests in Iran in January, that he alleged showed that the regime was close to collapse. These protests were sparked by a surge in inflation and fall in living standards, as a result of intensified sanctions and a collapse in the Iranian currency. Given the relatively small size of the Iranian economy and China’s vast financial reserves, it would have been an easy matter for China to have mitigated this crisis through a loan to support the Rial. It did not do so.

China has strongly condemned the attack on Iran, called for a “comprehensive ceasefire”, categorically rejected U.S. pressure to join in sanctions, and drawn up measures to punish Western companies in China that implement U.S. sanctions. China is also determined to go on buying Iranian and Russian) oil. One of our Chinese interlocutors, Wu Xinbo, director of the Center for American Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, told the New York Times that U.S. sanctions and restrictions “will pose a serious danger to the safety of China’s supply chain, so China needs to deal with this challenge in a more systemic way, not only to identify and provide early warning to the possible threat, but also to cope with this threat when it has already occurred.

She added, "China needs to establish a legal framework for dealing with these kinds of challenges in the long term.”

At the same time, Beijing has also been relatively cautious in its diplomatic strategy. There has as yet been no attempt to put together a global coalition to put pressure on the U.S. and Israel. In fact, Beijing (unlike Moscow) has never tried to exploit U.S. difficulties and mistakes in the Middle East, despite the huge opportunities to do so. I am reminded of the words a Chinese former official said to me in response to U.S. accusations that China is aiding Russia in the Ukraine war: “I do hope your colleagues realize that if we were really to help Russia, Moscow would win that war in three months.” He added however that China has no intention of doing so.

What explains this prudence on the part of China?

In the first place, our Chinese hosts argued, China is a reformist status quo power, not a disruptive one. It wants to adjust the present international system to give China more influence, not to overturn a system that has brought China immense economic benefits. They called absurd the idea that Beijing would want to disrupt international trade flows (including in the South China Sea). Of course, you might reply, “We’ll, they would say that, wouldn’t they?” — but logic and evidence suggest that this is indeed the case.

Secondly, the Chinese elite are deeply aware of the intractable and hideously complex nature of Middle Eastern affairs and the disasters that U.S. interventions have brought on itself. The words of a former Chinese diplomat to me many years ago still apparently hold true: “Why would we want to get involved in that mess?” As witnessed by its attempt in 2023 to promote reconciliation between Iran and Saudi Arabia, Beijing wants if possible to maintain good relations with all the energy-producing Gulf states, not to put all its eggs in Iran’s endangered energy basket.

Equally importantly, the Chinese government knows that intervention on the side of Iran would create an intensely dangerous response from the Trump administration. Given Trump’s nature, this might even be true of a limited intervention like creating an international coalition to support Iran diplomatically.

At best, this would risk a return by the U.S. to a mutually destructive trade war — something that China is preparing for but wishes to avoid for the present at least, given the economic problems caused by the Iran War.

At worst, this could provoke moves by the Trump administration to strengthen or even recognize Taiwanese independence; and as a number of our Chinese interlocutors said, for China this is the truly vital issue, to which everything else is in the end related; because Taiwanese independence would automatically mean China having to go to war, a prospect that they abhor given the cataclysmic dangers involved.

Even if China won a conventional war against the U.S. Navy and Air Force, the risk of escalation to nuclear war and the damage to the Chinese economy mean that this is something that Beijing wishes to avoid unless a move to formal Taiwanese independence leaves it with no choice.

So there is no “Alliance of Autocrats” or “Axis of Upheaval” that the U.S. needs to confront with aggressive policies, new alliances (if anyone wants to join Washington, after the Iran debacle) or massive new military spending.

Comforting for the world? Yes. For the U.S.? Not entirely. For China’s prudence in geopolitical affairs (outside its own immediate region) is matched by assiduous and concentrated attempts to create energy independence, and to develop Chinese technological industry so as to end dependence on the U.S. and the West for critical technological supplies (for example, of semiconductors), and eliminate any threat from U.S. sanctions. This is accompanied by equally determined efforts to dominate world markets for the strategically vital products of the future.

The Chinese establishment believes that Washington under Trump is doing a wonderful job of ruining America’s international dominance, that economic developments mean that time is on China’s side, and that it therefore makes sense to wait — not with the intention of one day destroying U.S. global primacy, but in the hope of watching it gradually destroy itself.